What is supramental?

“Supermind is between the SACHCHIDANANDA and the lower creation.”

 

“The vedic Rishis never attained to the Supermind for the earth or perhaps did not even make the attempt. They tried to rise individually to the Supramental plane, but they did not bring it down and make it a permanent part of the earth-consciousness.”

 

“Beyond the Supramental plane of consciousness, which is an intermediate step from overmind and mind to the complete experience of Sachchidananda, are the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit: here surely existence would not at all be based on the determination of the One in multiplicity, it would manifest solely and simply a pure identity in oneness. But the supramental Truth-consciousness would not be absent from these planes, for it is an inherent power of Sachchidananda.”

 

“…the supermind is a Truth-consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of Ignorance“.

 

“Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in the world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in it’s own power: it it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable.It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realized themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence.”

 

“The supermind in it’s very essence a truth-conciousness, a conciousness always free from the Ignorance, which is the foundation of our present natural and evolutionary existence and from which nature is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right conciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-conciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence;it’s course is straight and can go direct to it’s aim, it’s field is wide and can be made illimitable”.

 

“The descent of the Supermind will bring to one who receives it and is fulfilled in the truth-conciousness all the possibilities of the divine life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic experience which we recognize as constituting the spiritual life but also all which we now exclude from that category but which is capable of divinisation, not excluding whatever of the earth-nature and the earth-life can be transformed by the touch of the supermind and taken up in to the manifested life of the Spirit. For a Divine life on earth need not be a thing apart and exclusive having nothing to do with the common earthly existence: it will take up human being and human life, transform what can be transformed, spiritualise whatever can be spiritualised, cast it’s influence on the rest and effectuate either a radical or an uplifting change, bring about a deeper communion between the universal and the individual, invade the ideal with the spiritual truth of which it is a luminous shadow and help to uplift in to or towards a greater and higher existence. Mind it will uplift towards a diviner light of thought and will, life towards deeper and truer emotion and action, towards a larger power of itself, towards high aims and motives. Whatever cannot yet be raised into it’s own full truth of being, it will bring nearer to that fullness; whatever is not ready even for that change, will still see the possibility open to it whenever its still incomplete evolution has made it ready for self-fulfilment. Even the body, if it can bear the touch of Supermind, will become more aware of it’s own truth, – for there is a body-conciousness that has it’s own instinctive truth and power of right condition and action, even a kind of unexpressed occult knowledge in the constitution of it’s cells and tissues which may one day become concious and contribute to the transformation of the physical being.

 

“The full emergence of Supermind may be accomplished by a soverign manifestation, a descent into earth-conciousness and a rapid assumption of it’s powers and disclosing of it’s forms and the creation of Supramental race and a Supramental life: this must indeed be the full result of it’s action in Nature.”

 

“A mind of light will replace the present confusion and trouble of this earthly ignorance; it is likely that even those parts of humanity which cannot reach it will yet be aware of it’s possibility and conciously tend towards it; not only so, but the life of humanity will be enlightened, uplifted, governed, harmonised by this luminous principle and even the body become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in it’s propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonised perfection.It is this possibility that we have to look at and that would mean a new humanity uplifted in to Light, capable of a spiritualised being and action, open to governance by some light of the Truth-Conciousness, capable even on the mental level and in it’s own order of something that might be called the beginning of a divinised life“.

 

– Sri Aurobindo in “The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth”

“The overmind is the highest of the planes below the Supramental(i.e.supermind).”

 

“The Indian systems did not distinguish between two quite different powers and levels of consciousness, one which we call overmind and the other the true supermind or Divine Gnosis.That is the reason why they got confused about Maya(overmind-Force or vidya-Avidya), and took it for the supreme creative power.”

 

“In its nature and law the overmind is a delegate of the supermind consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance.”

 

“Overmind is the world of the gods and the gods are not merely powers but have forms also.”

 

“The Overmind is a sort of delegation from the Supermind(this is a metaphor only) which supports the present evolutionary universe in which we live here in Matter. If Supermind were to start here from the beginning as the direct creative power, a world of the kind we see we see now would be impossible; it would have been full of divine Light from the beginning, there would be no evolution in the inconscience of Matter, consequently no gradual evolution of consciousness in Matter. A line is therefore drawn between the higher half of the universe of consciousness, PARARDHA, and the lower half, APRARDHA. The higher half is constituted of SAT, CHIT, ANANDA, Mahas(the supramental)- the lower half of MIND, LIFE, MATTER. This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps us the full indivisible supramental Light, depends on it indeed, but in receiving it, divides, distributes, breaks it up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds, each of which is possible by a further diminution of consciousness, such as we reach in Mind, to regard as the sole or the chief Truth and all the rest as subordinate or contradictory to it.”

“There are above us. Successive states, levels or graded powers of being overtopping our normal Mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience.”

 

“From the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfillment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations or the consciousness through HIGHER MIND, ILLUMINED MIND AND INTUITION into OVERMIND and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the SUPERMIND or Divine Gnosis.”

In its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the Material World and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient – the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe – or, as it is sometimes called, the NON-BEING, Asat.

 

“The first emergence from the Inconscient is MATTER.”

“By immortality we mean the absolute life of the SOUL as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by birth and death and REBIRTH and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his IGNORANCE to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature.”

 

“Immortality is one of the possible results of supramentalisation but it is not obligatory result and it does not mean that there will be an eternal or indefinite prolongation of life as it is. To live in the Divine and have the Divine consciousness is itself immortality and to be able to divinise the body and also make it a fit instrument for divine works and divine life would be its material expression only.

 

There can be no immortality of the body without supramentalisation; the potentiality is there in the Yogic force and Yogis can live for 200 or 300 years or more, but there can be no real principle of it without the Supramental.”

 

“If the transformation of the body is complete, that means no subjection to death – it does not mean that one will be bound to keep the same body for all time. One creates a new body for oneself when one wants to change, but how it will be done cannot be said now. The present method is by physical birth- some occultists suppose that a time will come when that will not be necessary- but the question must be left for the Supramental evolution to decide.”

“The earth is a material field of evolution. Mind and Life, Supermind, Sachchidananda are in principle involved there in the earth conciousness; but only matter is first organised; then life descends from the life plane and gives shape and organisation and activity to the life principle in matter, creates the plant and animal; then mind descends from the mind plane, creating man. Now Supermind is to descend so as to create a Supramental race”.

 

“Out of this apparent Inconscience each potentially is revealed in it’s turn, first organised Matter concealing the indwelling spirit, the Life emerging in the plant and associated in the animal with a growing mind, the Mind itself evolved and organised in Man. This evolution, this spiritual progression – does it stop short here in the imperfect mental being called Man? In this vision each stage of evolution appears as due to the descent of a higher and higher power of conciousness, raising the terrestrial level, creating a new stratum, but the highest yet remain to descend and it is by their descent that the riddle of terrestrial existence will receive it’s solution and not only the soul but Nature herself find her deliverence”.

 

” The Supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-conciousness; for it’s upward ascent is not ended and mind is not it’s last summit”.

 

-Sri Aurobindo

New Humanity – Leaders of the Evolution in Earth-Nature

“With regards Supramental, what is more likely to happen is that the principle will be established in the evolution by the descent just as the mental principle was established by the appearace of thinking Mind and Man in earthly life. There will be a race of supramental beings on the earth just as now there is a race of mental beings. Man himself will find a greater possibility of rising to the planes intermediary between his mind and Supermind and making their powers effective in his life, which will mean a great change in humanity on earth“.

 

” A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but even in its knowledge bound to the Ignorance, a seeker after Light but not its natural possessor, open to the Light but not an inhabitant of the Light, not yet a perfect instrument, truth-concious and delivered out of the Ignorance. Instead, it would be possessed already of what could be called a mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth-conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing in to the Supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of Supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature.”

 

– Sri Aurobindo, SABCL, Vol.16,p.67

“There are different statuses of the Divine Conciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the pyschic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual pyschic conciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the Cosmic conciousness. Third is the Supramental transformation in which all becomes Supramentalised in the divine gnostic conciousness. It is only the latter that there can begin the complete transformation of mind, life and body – in my sense of completeness.

 

– Sri Aurobindo
The Supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or Overmental-spiritual cannot acheive. All of whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna’s mind for instance, was Overmentalised, Ramakrishna’s intuitive, Chaitanya’s spiritual-psychic, Buddha’s illumined higher mental. All that is different from the Supramental.”

” The way of Yoga(Supramental) followed here has a different purpose from others,- for it’s aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-conciousness in to the divine conciousness, but to bring the Supramental power of that divine conciousness down in to the ignornace of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a Divine life in Matter. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-conciousness are apposed to it and deny it and try to prevent it, and the sadhak will find his own mind, life and body full of the most obstinate impediments to it’s realisation. If you can accept the ideal whole-heartedly, face all difficulties, leave the past and it’s ties behind you and are ready to give up everything and risk everything for this divine possibility, then only can you hope to discover by experience the Truth behind it.”

 

“This (Supramental) yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; it’s object is to enter in to a higher Truth-conciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ananda. But for that, surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to that Higher conciousness is indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by it’s own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Conciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power.”

 

“The Old Yogas go straight from mind to the obsolute Divine, regard all dynamic existence as Ignorance, Illusion (Maya) or Lila; when you enter the static and immutable Divine truth, they say, you pass out of cosmic existence. My aim is to realise and also to manifest the Divine in the world, bringing down for the purpose a yet unmanifested power, – such as the Supermind.”

 

“All other Yogas regard this life as an illusion(maya) or a passing phase; the Supramental yoga alone regards it as a thing created by the Divine for progressive manifestation and takes the fulfulment of the life and the body for it’s object.”

 

– Sri Aurobindo

GRADATIONS OF DIVINE MANIFESTATION

-Courtesy: Arut Perum Jyothi & Deathless Body by
T.R.Thulasiram. Please refer to Divine Chart page in this
Website for the detailed charts prepared in the light of Sri
Aurobindo’s Integral yoga and Swami Ramalingam’s
Spiritual literature.

Editor’s note : Sri Aurobindo’s Supramental-spiritual literature is so vast and all-inclusive that one’s lifetime will not be enough to read and understand them. Without understanding them one can’t arrive at a complete knowledge in spirituality or religion. Even a basic understanding of his works provides a fresh perspective in facing the problems of life. Both Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s words and writings carry a definitive spiritual force within, which guides and lights up any spiritual aspirant. Particularly Sri Aurobindo’s ‘Savitri’ and ‘Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth’ provide rare knowledge and insights on the Supramental transformation and deathless body transformation. His major works like The Life Divine, Savitri, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Veda, The Upanishads, Letters on Yoga, The Human Cycle etc., are now available, in addition to the printed versions, in the form of a single CD version, which can be obtained from Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 605002, India. For further details please contact Sri Aurobindo Ashram directly

 

The above quotations are extracts are primarily reproduced with courtesy from ‘ A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga’ and ‘ Glossary of Terms in Sri Aurobindo’s writings,’ published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It is given for the benefit of the entire humanity and all the new seekers of Supramental Light, irrespective of their nationality, religion, race, following other spiritual practices etc. It is one of the dedicated endeavors of Auro-Ma-Ramalingam.org, to disseminate the teachings of the Supramental Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Mother to the modern youth, professionals and general public, in a simplified and appealing manner, within the relevant framework of their general interest in the evolution and perfection of human life on earth.

 

The terminology of “Supramental” and “Integral Yoga” were originally coined by Sri Aurobindo to refer exclusively his Yoga of Transformation of the life, mind and body – ultimately leading to the deathlessness of physical body as the crowning evolutionary achievement of earth-nature and Human beings. Above terminology, though replicated or used by some contemporary popular yogis as well as other forms of Yoga, does not have the same meaning. Generally the goal of other systems of Yoga is spiritual realization (soul realization level) which is different from the Supramental realization. The Supramental Yoga can be pursued or the Supermind can be manifested in our life, mind and body only by invoking the Consciousness and grace of Swami Ramalingam(Vallalar), Saint Thirumoolar, Sri Aurobindo and Mother as each of them had attained the supramental being in an unique manner. Because of their full realization of the Supramental being they are able to manifest it at our gross physical body level.